I think also that the post of yesterday is closer to the real reality, so to speak, of Venezuela, and perhaps illustrates the reason why Chavez is seeking foreign adventure so people do not inquire about how many homeless, squatters, shanty dwellers are still in Venezuela in spite of 9 years of social revolution. Besides I have written that a war with Colombia is suicidal for Venezuela and my opinion has not changed. If Chavez indeed enters a war against Uribe he probably will be booted out of office by its own army before he provokes its destruction.

the real interesting detail yesterday, besides Reyes elimination, was the reaction of Chavez. Reyes might be important for Colombia but it is really a Colombo-Colombian matter even if he was shot on the Ecuador side of the border. The rest of the world, well, they might as well stop holding their breath and set down.

But Chavez of course cannot do so. Not only he is pissed at Lina Ron for stealing the limelight on hostage release day earlier this week, but this action of the Colombian army definitely puts into an increasingly distant background his FARC "humanitarian" successes. After all, once Ingrid is dead who is going to care in the world about any FARC hostages? Once Reyes is out, who can do anything about hostage release until the FARC sorts out its internal matters?

So Chavez pathologically needing to be the center of attention, unable to resit his butt-in tendencies declared yesterday that if Uribe were to attempt the same stunt inside Venezuela, there would be war, "causus bellis" [sic] it would be (2).

This is of course a grievous mistake on his part because his subconscious betrayed him : there must be indeed reasons for Uribe to order police actions on the Venezuela borders. With this simple menace Chavez in fact admits that the Venezuelan border is nothing more than the rest area of the FARC guerrillas and that these ones roam around in Venezuela. We already knew that, of course, and for memory just the case of Granda should be mentioned. But Chavez yesterday implied that the FARC operates freely in Venezuela and that he is protecting them and that he supports these terrorists and drug traffickers enough to go to war for them. I cannot underestimate the meaning of this, the real meaning that is, beyond the military flourish that Chavez would like the world to think.

He also asked whether Colombia was becoming the Israel of the region, which also betrayed his antisemitism: anti semites are experts at finding ways to criticize Israel but not Jews, with sometimes a certain justice one must say, at the drop of the hat, even if the analogy with Colombia is rather debased.

It looks like the computer taken at Raul Reyes camp had information that would point out to a direct link between the government of Correa and the FARC, à la Chavez. That would explain the harsh position assumed today by Correa whereas yesterday he was behaving much more like a head of state. I mean, let's start from the beginning here, how come Reyes was in Ecuador? Don't they supervise their border over there? Or has Ecuador become equally a haven for the FARC as Venezuela is? Truly, if there is a smoking gun of the sort toward Ecuador current administration, expect trouble for Correa as his opposition is not as wishy washy as the Venezuelan one that could not even supervise the first scandalous shipments of oil to Cuba.

According to MSNBC.COM, Chavez asked for a moment of silence during his program Sunday in honor of Reyes,and praised Reyes as “a true revolutionary,” and said he met the former trade union leader in Brazil in the 90's.

If he (Chavez) thinks that Venezuelans will forget about their hunger and lack of basic food staples by starting a war with Colombia, he's certainly delusional and an egomaniac.

The other hipothesis is that he NEEDS this war like a desperado. Just to come to the most violent national scenario and THEN suspend 'las garantías'. That would be his ticket to stop the regional elections.